XProtect® Essential – the best FREE VMS on the market

Tuesday, 4 October 2016

Author: Kimberly Sallingboe

Product News

For years, XProtect® Go has been our free VMS product, providing thousands of users with basic VMS functionality at no cost. Now it’s time to shake things up. Starting October 10, we are discontinuing XProtect Go, and making XProtect Essential our free VMS product. XProtect Essential will be the most feature-rich, free VMS available on the market as it offers unlimited retention time and anytime, anywhere access to both live and recorded video.

How free Essential is a game-changer for you

Users who download the new free Essential constitute an entirely new market segment ripe for upselling. By offering a full-fledged VMS for free, you can introduce low-end, price-sensitive customers to our award-winning VMS and then convince them to upgrade their Milestone system as their needs change.

Upsell opportunities include:

You can sell Essential subscription packs to users who need to expand their system beyond 8 cameras. The subscription packs also represent a unique recurring revenue opportunity, and a way to grow low-end customers over time, as their surveillance needs change.

You can upsell to XProtect® Express to users who want to integrate other systems and capabilities into their video system

You can upsell to XProtect® Professional to users with multiple locations and/or servers

XProtect Essential will also make an excellent demo product, enabling you to give potential customers a full-scale VMS to try before buying one of our more advanced products.

How will it work?

The free version of XProtect Essential will be available as a free download supporting up to 8 cameras. Customers can expand their system by purchasing the new XProtect Essential subscription packs. A subscription pack includes 8 cameras licenses and a 1-year subscription to Milestone Care™ Plus. A total of 5 subscription packs can be added to one Software license code, resulting in a system supporting up to 48 cameras in total. Customers must renew this subscription every year.

What will happen to existing XProtect Essential customers?

We recognize that we have many loyal XProtect Essential customers, and we want to make sure that they have a system that is continuously updated and able to expand with their business needs. Thus, existing XProtect Essential customers with a valid Milestone Care™ Plus agreement will be able to upgrade to XProtect Express for free. To help you migrate existing XProtect Essential customers without Care Plus, we’re introducing a limited time campaign where customers can upgrade at a fraction of the price. Read more about the campaign here.

What about new business?

In addition to making XProtect Essential free, we are also reducing the price of XProtect Express by 25%, making it a well-positioned, entry-level Milestone product.